WHERE WE BURY THE BONES
Dumbworld & Kilkenny Arts Festival
A new work of contemporary music theatre
A bone will never speak its secrets – but perhaps it can sing them.
After its premiere at Kilkenny Arts Festival (KAF), Where We Bury the Bones - the latest groundbreaking work from multi-award-winning duo John McIlduff and Brian Irvine (Olivier Award-nominated and four-time Ivor Novello winner) of Dumbworld - arrives at The Lyric Theatre, Belfast, for one night only.This intimate and challenging work of contemporary music theatre begins with the discovery of a single bone, unearthed during archaeological excavations in Kilkenny’s Abbey Quarter. From this fragment grows a sweeping reflection on civilisation: its rituals, its industries, its skateboarders – and the traces we leave behind.
On stage, audiences are invited into a living excavation. An 8-piece orchestra, opera, contemporary dance, live film, archival text, and a hand-built scale model intertwine to create a vivid, shifting landscape. By reassembling fragments of past and present, Where We Bury the Bones offers a startling meditation on who we are, how we live, and our relationship with the land beneath our feet.
At once poetic and provocative, Where We Bury the Bones sings the unspoken stories buried in our soil.
Conceived and created by Dumbworld
Directed by John McIIduff
Music by Brian Irvine
Additional Text by Kate Heffernan
Design by Sabine Dargent
Sung by Megan O’Neill
Dumbworld: Our vision is to create extraordinary art experiences of the highest quality.
Established in 2009 by Brian Irvine and John McIlduff, Dumbworld is an artist led, creative production company.
Dumbworld creates artistically ambitious and exciting pieces that involve working closely with significant practicing professionals as well as people of all ages, experiences, and backgrounds.
We make work that is to be found at the intersection of music, image and words including film, opera, documentary, oratorio, animation, public art installation, performance pieces, theatre, and curatorial projects. We have created and produced full-scale operas, community operas, animated operas, large -scale children’s orchestral oratorios, feature films, feature documentaries and installations.
Funder Credits:
Kilkenny Arts Festival, The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon, Creative Ireland and Kilkenny County Council, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast City Council.
Reviews
“What really fascinates McIlduff and Irvine is the land itself: the different faces it has shown throughout its history, and the different ways humans have lived on and changed it.”
“...the audience is invited simply to consider the intertwinement of natural and human history from several perspectives.”
“at the dénouement it came alive with a brilliance that had me leaning forward in my seat”
Gallery
